


The Possibility of Eames

by msmorland



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-18
Updated: 2016-11-18
Packaged: 2018-08-31 15:36:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8583967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msmorland/pseuds/msmorland
Summary: Arthur is a mature adult.
He’s pretty sure actual mature adults don’t have to tell themselves they’re mature adults, but most of them also don’t have Eames for a sometimes-coworker. Arthur’s needed some kind of mantra since he was 22 and suiting up for his first jobs in dreamshare, trying not to let Eames get under his skin.





	

Arthur is a mature adult.

He’s pretty sure actual mature adults don’t have to _tell themselves_ they’re mature adults, but most of them also don’t have Eames for a sometimes-coworker. Arthur’s needed some kind of mantra since he was 22 and suiting up for his first jobs in dreamshare, trying not to let Eames get under his skin.

He needs one now, as he knots his tie and slicks back his hair and gets ready for his first date with Eames.

Well, his first fake, sort-of date with Eames.

It’s an absurd job for which Eames has constructed an even more absurd—but, Arthur has to admit, plausible enough—approach. Another thing Arthur’s been trying not to do since he was 22 is admit that Eames is ever right about anything, but he does, actually, have the better idea a frustratingly large percentage of the time.

So here Arthur is, pretending he hasn’t chosen this particular outfit for Eames or given his hair a moment’s extra thought.

Here Arthur is, staring at his own face in the mirror. Eames, when he looks in a mirror, can become an entirely different person. But Arthur has always been hopeless as a forger.

_You’re not in love with Eames, you’re not in love with Eames, you’re not in love with Eames_. He thinks it hard, staring at his own face.

But in the mirror, he is still just Arthur: completely put-together and, underneath the expensive fabrics and careful presentation, as hopelessly in love with Eames as ever. He has no choice but to continue as he always has, pretending that he is unaffected by Eames’s flirtations, pretending that, to him, they are nothing more than flirtations.

Arthur is a mature adult. 

* * *

The mark is a nightlife impresario best known for his first club, a gay club in Greenwich Village. Arthur had been there in his younger days and still has a place nearby, and it all makes the job feel closer to home than he would like.

Eames’s idea is this: they show up at the club, circle each other, flirt, dance, and, eventually, when they need a more...private space, they make their way back to the mark’s office, where they’ll be able to access the information they need to plan the rest of the job.

When Eames had suggested this scenario, Arthur had quirked an eyebrow, shot him a wry look.

“Don’t think I don’t see what you’re doing, Mr. Eames,” he’d said.

“Well, darling,” and here Eames had quirked an eyebrow back in challenge, “do you have a better idea?”

And Arthur didn’t. Breaking into the nightclub when it was closed would have been several layers more complicated, and the extra risk needless.

So here he is, strolling up to the club doors, offering the bouncer his ID (a fake, of course). Arthur gets a drink at the bar and leans back against a wall, letting his eyes rove over the crowd without making eye contact with anyone in particular, ignoring anyone who tries to approach. He needs to be unoccupied when Eames arrives, he tells himself, pretending he doesn’t also _want_ to be unoccupied when Eames arrives. Arthur has the occasional flirtation, the once in a blue moon one-night stand, but mostly because he feels like he should; it’s been years since he’s genuinely wanted anyone other than Eames.

So it feels a bit like magic when the sea of dancers parts and Eames is there on the other side. His eyes lock on Arthur’s and he begins making his way across the dance floor. Arthur stays where he is against the wall, but he sets his drink down and lets his gaze linger, giving Eames’s outfit a once-over. It’s slightly more coordinated and less eye-destroying than his usual.

“Mr. Eames, I didn’t know you had it in you,” Arthur says when Eames gets close.

“Then you won’t believe what else I have in me,” Eames says, waggling his eyebrows and holding out a hand for Arthur.

Arthur can’t help himself: he bursts out laughing. A look of surprised delight flashes across Eames’s face as he tugs Arthur toward him.

And then they’re dancing. Arthur may have dated by rote the last few years, and he may not have come to this club since long before that, but he knows how to move, and, despite the lack of coordination suggested by the contents of his closet, so does Eames.

They move well together, and Arthur isn’t all that surprised. They’ve always worked well together, he and Eames. They had a way of building on each other’s actions and ideas that Arthur has never really had with anyone else, even Cobb. It’s part of why Arthur’s found Eames so hard to let go of for all these years, even as it galls him that someone so infuriating seems to click with him so well in the field.

He can’t, despite all evidence to the contrary, give up the idea that it has to mean something, that there must be something more in store for them together.

“Let’s make this believable, hmm?” Eames murmurs in Arthur’s ear, his hand on Arthur’s hip, and Arthur has just a moment to think _right, the job_ before Eames is kissing him.

And Arthur is kissing back.

He forgets all about the job.

He lets his imagination lead him, doing a few of the things he’s wanted to do in all those long afternoons of covertly watching Eames in warehouse after warehouse. He moves in close, runs his hands up Eames’s chest and kisses Eames as thoroughly as he can manage. Eames is right there with him, following Arthur’s lead. He stops pretending to be unaffected by Eames and instead kisses Eames as if this is the only chance he might ever get to do so.

He loses all track of time.

When Eames pulls back, he looks thoroughly debauched but also dazed, like he isn’t sure what’s hit him.

“Arthur—” he starts, and the knowledge of where they are and why slams back into Arthur with the force of a bullet.

He doesn’t want to hear whatever Eames is about to say.

“Upstairs, now,” Arthur says.

He grabs Eames’s hand and tugs him along, hoping they look convincingly eager, convincingly focused on each other, because Arthur has lost all desire to pull Eames into corners along the way, to kiss him in a way that might lead Arthur to forget where he is and what he’s doing there. He can’t lose control like that again.

“Darling,” Eames’s lips are at Arthur’s ear again, then along his neck. His voice is a hum through Arthur’s skin. “Maybe we should—”

“Focus, Eames,” Arthur snaps, his voice laser-sharp.

He passes a pin back to Eames and keeps watch while Eames picks the lock on the mark’s office door. It’s less efficient than his usual work, the pin slipping once or twice in Eames’s grip, but he gets it done quickly enough. And then they’re inside and in motion, efficiently taking turns on watch and research. Arthur sorts quickly through the piles of documents on the mark’s desk until he finds what he needs. Eames scopes out the photos on the walls and any other personal details he can find around the office.

And then it’s done and they’re slipping out of the club, crowding close to each other, trying to look like they’re heading somewhere else together. They separate at the corner and Arthur waits until he’s sure Eames is out of sight before he folds himself forward and rests his hands on his knees, panting like he’s just been on the run.

It’s all swirling through his mind: the kiss, the way Eames’s chest felt under his hands, the way Eames looked when they’d separated, like Arthur had told him something shocking that Eames hadn’t known.

It’s something Arthur hadn’t meant to tell.

_Stupid_ , Arthur chides himself, still bent over. _So unbelievably stupid._  

* * *

Arthur thinks an actual walk of shame couldn’t be more embarrassing than having to show his face at the warehouse the next morning. They’re working out of an empty space in the Meatpacking District, and Arthur’s stomach churns the whole walk over. But when he gets there, all he finds is a cup of coffee on his desk with a post-it note stuck to it. The note says _surveillance_ in Eames’s handwriting, with a winking face drawn after it.

Eames often brings Arthur coffee, and has been known to update him on the job progress via a one-word note or text. So Arthur interprets this as Eames choosing to pretend nothing has happened between them, or that what happened was exactly what was needed for the job and nothing more. Arthur supposes this is probably their best way forward. Still, Arthur crumples up the post-it with unnecessary force and scowls his way through the coffee.

* * *

After a few days, the churning in Arthur’s stomach recedes and those humiliating moments in the club stop being the first thing that comes to mind when Arthur looks at, talks to, or thinks of Eames. He still can’t call up any of his fantasies of Eames—and Arthur doesn’t even mean _those kinds_ of fantasies, but just the everyday ones, the ones about what his life might be like if Eames felt the same way about him as he feels about Eames—without flushing. But maybe that’s okay. Maybe his embarrassment is a kind of personal early warning system, reminding him of what will happen if he forgets himself again.

The job goes off without a hitch. They catch the mark during a minor surgical procedure and have no problems going into the dream, a reconstruction of the club. They get the information they need, and there’s only one moment when Arthur’s resolve wavers—when he catches sight of Eames across the club again and thinks he sees a new heat in his gaze. But then the projections start getting antsy, and Arthur’s attention is immediately needed elsewhere. He doesn’t see Eames again until they’re waking up from the dream, and there’s no time to linger.

Maybe, Arthur thinks, he’ll get out of this with no lasting harm done.

* * *

Still, maybe it shouldn’t surprise Arthur, when he gets back to his apartment in the Village a week later, to find Eames in his living room, sprawled out on the couch and flipping through Arthur’s TV channels. There’s an open box of pizza on Arthur’s coffee table, a couple of slices already eaten.

The usual protocol is to scatter after a job is done, and he and Eames had done just that. Arthur had gone to LA for a week, hoping to ground himself by playing with James and Phillipa. He’d tried to ignore Cobb’s questions about how he was really doing, what kinds of jobs he’d taken lately. He’d very intentionally not let himself track where Eames had gone, even though Arthur always kept tabs on team members and always, job together or no, kept tabs on Eames.

“You’ve made yourself at home,” he tells Eames, giving a pointed look to Eames’s shoes next to the couch and the pizza on the coffee table. “Surely you know you’re supposed to go _far_ from the job site, Mr. Eames.” 

“Ah, but that’s what they expect you to do, is it not?”

The words are right, but there’s something off about Eames’s tone. His words lack their usual lightness, the undertone of flirtation Arthur's grown used to.

And Arthur feels a pang of fear, suddenly. What if he’s ruined it after all? What if he and Eames can’t come back from this, can’t settle back into the patterns of their working relationship?

Arthur has never really known dreamshare without the possibility of Eames. He doesn’t want to.

“Arthur,” Eames says. He sounds worn out, rubs a hand tiredly over his face.

“Arthur, look at me.”

Arthur, still standing in his coat in the middle of his own living room, looks.

“Arthur,” says Eames. “No one is that good of an actor.”

“You are,” Arthur says.

He’d reminded himself of it furiously in the hours after the kiss, afraid that otherwise he would slip up again, let himself give in to the urge to pull Eames close again, to tell him even more than Arthur had inadvertently already revealed about himself. 

“No,” Eames says now, meeting Arthur’s gaze directly. “I’m not.”

It takes a minute for Eames’s meaning to sink in. When it does, Arthur feels something begin to open up in his chest. He hopes against hope.

“But you—” Arthur starts. Stops. “You never—”

“Darling, you know there were a million other ways we could have done that job.” Eames stands up. Takes a step closer to Arthur. “When have you ever known me to do something I didn’t want to do?”

Arthur, though he’d be the first to admit his brain has entered something of a stunned, fogged state, can’t think of an example.

And then Eames is kissing him again, and Arthur is kissing back.

Eames’s lips move along Arthur’s jaw as he helps Arthur tug off his coat.

Through his haze, Arthur wonders vaguely why he’d ever been so concerned about maturity. This is so much better, indescribably better, than Arthur’s definition of maturity.

Eames leads Arthur toward his couch, and Arthur feels fiercely grateful that Eames had known to do this here, in Arthur’s own space. He’d known that this is what Arthur would need to believe him, to take him seriously outside of a job, beyond the familiarity of their old habits.

“Darling,” Eames murmurs. “Arthur.”

“It’s okay, love,” Eames says. “It’s okay. You can have this.”


End file.
